Exactly 1 year ago from today we finished and released Border, so to celebrate all of it’s success we are giving away 3 posters! Check it out below.

All you have to do is sign up to our mailing list with your email by July 10th at www.macuastudios.com and 3 lucky winners will be selected at random. (Don’t worry we won’t be sending you spam only important updates on our projects 🙂 Also if you’re already signed up then you’re already in!) Tell all your friends!

The official Borders Poster!

We really appreciate all the people who have supported us through the games life before and after it’s success so we want to give something back to you. Thanks!

Hi Everyone! This is Genaro Vallejo, from Macua Studios and here is my quick re-cap of my experience in Sheffield Doc-Fest, United Kingdom. As my first time in Europe it was such an honor to show our team hard work internationally!

After landing in Manchester in whole new continent for me to move around, somehow I found a way to arrive to Sheffield, the landscapes during my train trip to Sheffield were simply stunning.

Once I arrived to Sheffield, I was surprised how kind and polite the Sheffield staff were, The helped me booking my hotel and installing the Borders Cabinet at the Millennium Gallery. It was such a breeze with their assistance!.

The next day the Alternate Realities showcase (The place where Borders was shown during the festival) officially begun and I was really excited! I meet a lot of amazing, interesting and awesome people at the event and they loved the game! Being a more interactive experience in a Documentary-centered document, Borders stood out as an important and innovate art piece that shows that video games also can be used as a powerful tool for story telling.

On Sunday Jun 10th, I had a public panel on It’s a Family Affair: Small Stories, Big Meaning. in which we discussed how our small stories about immigration and family can have a impact in others. It was an unforgettable experience sharing the panel with really talented people that use new forms of interactive media (VR and Alternate) to tell stories in a whole new level.

After an intense but life-changing 6-day experience and a cancelled flight. I got a quick break spending an unexpected night in Manchester’s outskirts, which helped me to recover after a long week. I am really happy and grateful of both Gonzalo and Jon, because thanks to their hard work and motivation we can show our projects, not only in video game events but also in Documentary-Film as well, is a testament that video games is such a powerful art form that can transcend media.

So recently our team at Macua Studios was busy showing off our first game Borders ALL AROUND THE WORLD! Jon Digiacomo and I (Gonzalo Alvarez) showed off Borders at the Indiecade Showcase at E3 while Genaro Reyes flew overseas to show it off at Sheffield Doc Fest in the UK. It’s surreal to think that exactly 1 year ago we were all just learning how to make games, and a year later we were presenting our first game at the most prestigious events!

We got an awesome banner (not biased at all) and set up our booth with two computers. Just to catch people up to speed, Borders is a 2D stealth game about immigration where players attempt to cross over the border, but every death leaves behind a permanent skeleton in the map. We had a computer with a clean slate just for the people at E3 and then we had one with the 1500 bodies brought over from the installation I had set up in Texas.

The game received a lot of attention, more so than I would of expected and it was pretty much busy at all times. We had a lot of press coverage, and most importantly, a lot of people truly enjoyed the game! In fact we had a couple of people come back just because they wanted to beat it. Our first person to beat it spent 40 min trying to figure it out and that was an honor.

By the end of the 3 days of talking till our voices were out, we had gotten over 600 skeletons in the E3 computer and over 2300 bodies total alongside the traveling build from Texas. I am so glad that many people not only found the game interesting, but understood the concept behind the game and really enjoyed my parent’s story.

This was an experience we could not have seen coming and we are so glad that this has allowed us to meet other amazing gamedevs in the industry and get more exposure. We cannot wait to start full production of our next project and hopefully have a fan base to interact with!